Tuesday 23 December 2008

Eight leapers leaping…

I did say that I was going to try and paint all eighteen of the Voltigeurs before Christmas but I always thought this might be a paint job too far. I have only managed to complete eight members of the 10th Legere and here you can see them negotiating their way through some giant bottle caps. I use the bottle caps as temporary bases while painting because I’ve seen it on other people’s blogs and thought it looked more professional than the scrappy little off cuts of plasticard I was using before.

The finished uniforms do look a bit garish to me (like a military version of Noddy) and I certainly think this may have a bit of a negative impact on their tactical role by drawing fire as Rafa pointed out. I use Foundry paints and find that the red and yellow doesn’t cover very well requiring four or five coats – this adds considerably to the time taken to paint each figure and this is part of my excuse for the low productivity.

As I suspected though they have been very enjoyable to paint as all the figures are great sculpts and cleanly moulded. To finish the unit I have some standing firing and charging figures but it will definitely be 2009 before they’re done.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

6 comments:

rpardo said...

Hi
Remember that shako plumes were usually removed in campaign. Moreover, the weapons (exception the rifles) were very inaccurate at that time!
Merry Christmas
Rafa

Anonymous said...

Merry Christmas!

Matt

old-tidders said...

Merry Xmas

- Allan

lewisgunner said...

Lovely they look.
happy Xmas to you, Sharon and all your avid audience
Roy

Next Year some Garde de Paris for the Xmas spot?? I think its a more seasonal uniform.

Stryker said...

Hi Roy - and a Merry Xmas to you and yours. I'll bear it in mind about the Garde de Paris!

Ian

lewisgunner said...

http://www.1789-1815.com/images/Planches/GT%202_100bw.jpg

Shows the Gde de P in nice red and green uniforms. They would need to be the 1809-12 French HH!!

Roy